The city’s most terrifying theatre company, Eldritch Theatre, stages a ghoulishly giddy spectacle just in time for Halloween combining 18th-Century Spirit Theatre with 1950s Schlock Horror and a cleverly re-imagined optical principle known as Live 3D!.

In the 18th century, the audiences of Europe were gripped by a new form of spirit theatre. Using magic lanterns, shadows, puppetry, and parlour illusions, artists created “Fantasmagorie”, during which ghosts rose from their mouldering tombs, fiery demons and smokey phantoms cavorted, and rotting skeletons materialized from thin air. In the 1950s, pulp magazine Amazing Stories published a series of letters from Andrew Shaver detailing his descent into the hollow earth and terrifying tales of the Deros, an abandoned species who torment the human race.

Using a never before imagined process known as Live 3D!, created by Micha Dahan and developed by The Coal Mine Theatre, Eldritch Theatre combines the 18th-century traditions of fantasmagorie with a story loosely based on the gripping Shaver Mysteries of the 1950s that will send our audiences screaming into the night and a little wiser about the dangers that lie beneath our feet.

Performed and created by Kira Hall, Michelle Urbano, and Eric Woolfe, with fiendish designs by Melanie McNeill, and expertly stage managed by Sandi Becker, audiences will discover the dangers of lost Lemuria. Eldritch Theatre is celebrating its 25th season of terrifying audiences and artists alike. The team is thrilled to bring its newest play to life, even if you can see the mould hanging off its putrid flesh… you’ll see it in 3D!

“There’s always been something of the carnival barker about Woolfe and his work. Drawn in by the promise of witnessing eerie, uncanny sights, we in the audience pay our two bits and willingly enter his world.” - Glenn Sumi, Toronto Star

Phantasmagoria 3D! opens at the Red Sandcastle Theatre on Wednesday, October 30, and closes on Sunday, November 10. Performances Tuesday-Saturday begin at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday matinees begin at 3:30 p.m.

General Admission in-advance: $35

At the Door: $40

Tight Wad Tuesday: $25

Masquerade Wednesday: $25 (Masks required)

Sundays: Pay What Pleases You

Website: eldritchtheatre.ca